(1) Field of the Invention
This invention concerns processes for the hydroconversion of a slurry-phase combined feed comprising at least one low value petroleum derived hydrocarbon and at least one biorenewable feedstock.
(2) Description of the Art
Upgrading heavy oils, bitumen and coal liquids into a lighter hydrocarbon liquids such as diesel, naphtha and gasoline is important in order to maximize the amount of useful hydrocarbon materials that can be derived from crude oil and other heavy hydrocarbon feedstocks.
One problem faced in upgrading heavy oils is the lack of access to lighter hydrocarbon steams that can be combined with heavy oils to improve their conversion into lighter hydrocarbon streams. At the same time, there is a need to identify and employ refinery feed sources that are not based upon crude oil for upgrading or conversion into useful product streams such as diesel, gasoline, kerosene, naphtha and so forth. In particular, there is a need to identify renewable biological sources of such materials.
Materials such as particulate biological materials, pyrolysis oils and lignocellulosic biomass based materials have been identified as possible biorenewable sources of oils and polymers. However, one problem with using such biorenewable sources as refinery process feeds is that they are often in a solid as opposed to liquid form, they form a multi-phase liquid, and/or they contain large amounts of oxygen, all of which cause difficulties is processing biorenewable feeds in traditional refining processes. There is a need, therefore to devise methods and processes for refining multi-phase feedstocks including biorenewable materials in conventional refining processes.